


Hero

by chararii



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anbu Haruno Sakura, Angst, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Depressing, Downward Spiral, End of the World, Everybody Dies, Fuinjutsu Gone Wrong, Gen, Gore, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Missions Gone Wrong, Not A Fix-It, POV Haruno Sakura, Sakura is not a Hero, Time Travel, Violence, fractured personality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:55:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24934120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chararii/pseuds/chararii
Summary: The world ends quietly and along with it, the endless cycle of violence and death. When it's her turn to go, she accepts it with open arms, finding salvation in long pale fingers that curl around her neck and a single red eye glowing in victory.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 118
Collections: THE naruto fic list, Team 7 🌀, why im sleep deprived 💖✨





	Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Horribly short and horribly angsty. More a product of "I felt like it" rather than "I want to write this".

She's their last resort. A last ditch effort, a desperation move. A wet bandage haphazardly slapped over a gaping wound. She's meant to save everyone but the thing about shoddy patch jobs is that they don't last. It has to be her, they say and she agrees because in this time and place she never learned to say no. She's supposed to save them. Save her friends, family, village, world. They send her back. She has to be strong.

It breaks her instead.

Waking is like coming up for air. A single glance into the mirror and she's back to drowning. Her hair is long, her body small and weak, skin unblemished and scarless. She can't breathe and the medic in her recognises the signs of a panic attack. She does the unhealthy thing and ignores the signs. She has a job to do. She takes stock of her surroundings and packs what little equipment she has and tries to forget how much she hates her twelve year old self. Before she leaves, she picks up a kunai and cuts off her hair first, covers the mirror with an unused pillowcase second.

It's graduation day, she realises as she enters the academy and tries to fight the wave of emotion that threatens to swallow her whole. She can't afford to be caught up in this. Quietly she slinks into her seat, the same seat she'd been sitting in so many years ago and stares straight ahead. Part of her wants to look at them, the two lights of her life, but in reality she's too afraid of what she'll see. She can't help it and risks a glance. Nothing but grey skin, lifeless eyes and bones that will soon fall to dust. She swallows audibly and focuses on Iruka. There's no time to look back, only to charge ahead.

Everything plays out exactly the same and it sickens her. Every second that passes is a reminder of all the mistakes she made, all the horrors that are yet to come. This entire world is a tragedy and she's the only one who can see it. It makes for a very lonely existence.

She tries her best. She smiles brightly and laughs freely, squints her eyes just so she can hide the pain in them and doesn't have to look at the walking talking corpses that used to be her closest friends. She knows Kakashi is suspicious. Knows exactly what he's thinking. She was supposed to be the normal one. She's not. He's the only one to see it. It's a good thing he's too haunted by his own ghosts to try and meet new ones.

Her instructions are clear. Keep your head down, don't arouse suspicion, wait until the chuunin exams to interfere. The words are carved into her very soul, the last remnants of a time that has not yet come to pass. Wave happens and she's a child of war time. She fights to kill. She does. Kakashi looks at her strangely, the other two in horror. She's covered in blood and forgets that she's supposed to be weak. She makes an effort to stammer and shiver but knows she's not fooling anyone. They ask her if she's alright. She lies.

Kakashi follows her but she's thirteen years old, a genin and not supposed to notice. She trains on her own, gravitates around her team like the earth around the sun. The distance between them feels just as far. She can already see it happen, the budding rage, feelings of inadequacy, thirst for more. She looks at the last Uchiha and sees a mission she already failed, a mission she was never equipped to handle. She's tired. She tries to make it work anyway.

The day of the chuunin exams shakes her out of her stupor. Like a sleeper agent she wakes from her fever dream, finds focus and determination in her bones. She keeps track of Gaara and loses her pursuer, aces the written exam and braves the Forest of Death. She stands in front of the gate and knows what will happen if she fails.

Her bones are broken, she bleeds profusely and she's about to die. She tried her best but failed still. It's not supposed to be her. It was never supposed to be her. For once in her life she was meant to be the hero but it wasn't meant to be. He gets bitten. The mission failed and she can't help but think that it was always going to end this way. Her entire life she had tried to save him yet always fallen short. It wasn't meant to be her. They sent her anyway.

Failure and hatred cloud her eyes so when she's faced with a young Ino she doesn't see her childhood friend. That Ino is gone. Dead and buried, just like the rest of them. Ice runs through her veins and she grips her kunai tighter as she descends the stairs of the arena for her match. She hears the same words as last time in the same tone, with the same rhythm and it makes her furious. It's a close call that Ino's able to leave the arena alive.

The following month passes in silence. She doesn't do much beyond conditioning her body and avoiding any and all contact with just about everyone. Then, her first match against Dosu happens. She sees the sound headband and forgets herself. Gaara looks at her and seems pleased at the amount of crimson soaking her clothes. He's the only one.

They both leave and she's left behind. It feels like a cruel joke that history insists on repeating itself, not caring for her efforts. They leave her, one after another, until she's all by herself. Before Kakashi disappears for the final time, he suggests she seek out the Hokage for an apprenticeship. She almost does but then realises that she already learned everything the woman has to offer and declines. She officially ruined her original timeline. Maybe it's better this way.

She gets passed around like a hot potato. She's only barely able to escape being assigned to the genin corps, her only saving grace her will to kill and the ability to match it. Kakashi is gone, back in ANBU and too busy to keep an eye on her. She uses the time to exhaust herself over and over again to regain her former strength. High academy test scores and a variety of books on chakra control make for a suitable explanation when she's in front of her former shishou one day. There's doubt in her honey coloured eyes and she knows how paper-thin her alibi is. She finds it hard to care much. In the end she's an asset no matter where she got her skills from.

She doesn't use her medical chakra. Being confined to the prison cell that is the hospital is the last thing on her agenda. She needs to be out in the field because it's the only thing she knows how to do. She's no hero, failed the only job they had given her. She's powerless to stop what is yet to come, too weak to retrieve either of her charges, disgustingly useless. Yet even if everything around her crumbles to dust, she can still fight. So she does. It makes her feel alive.

She weasels her way out of two impeding psych evals and avoids the third through sheer miracle. She has a reputation now, is known to kill without pause or question, ready to take missions nobody else wants to take. She should have seen this coming but accepts the mask with the same dead look in her eyes that gets her through day after day.

Leopard. A solitary animal, relying on brute force to end its victims, known for surplus killing. The appropriateness of it almost makes her smile. She gets assigned to her team and meets the mask that is her taichou. She takes one single look at the red and black lines that are painted on white clay and wants to cry. Dog. How ironic.

Her fists smash through solid chests, her fingers crack ribs, she tears a head off of a man's shoulders, she grabs entire bodies and pulls them apart. She knows a hundred ways to kill. She wishes she'd known just one to save someone.

Everything happens just like it did last time. After two years of countless murders, bloody battlefields and teetering on the edge of destruction, one of her lights comes back. Their old cell is reformed, Dog spends hours arguing with the Hokage that Leopard should not be put on that team. He loses the fight. Leopard loses her mind, one tiny fragment after another.

She remembers Sasori. In another life, he had been her very first death. Now he's just one notch in a post so whittled down it's a mere shadow of its former self. There's no blood and she kneels next to his head with her hand still clutched around his heart. You are not immortal, she says. Nothing lasts forever and it's a lesson she wishes she didn't have to learn. He chuckles, then closes his eyes as he accepts his impending demise. You fight like you are drowning. Swim, little girl. Swim or sink. She crushes his heart in her fist, adds another number even though she has lost count. He is right. She is drowning and she's forgotten how to swim.

His words stay with her. It's funny, she thinks that in every life, he will always be her first for something. Perhaps that's its own kind of immortality.

The team changes and she gets reunited with more corpses. She can't look at anyone anymore and more than once asks the Hokage to draft her back into ANBU. She is denied and Leopard gets retired. She gets drunk, falls in bed with a stranger, then gets up and life moves on.

She sees him but doesn't _see_ him. His light is dimmed, soul corrupted, world lost. There's no point in anything anymore. She still fights but doesn't know why. Maybe it's just a habit at this point.

Time speeds up as numbers thin. Both sides lose lives and she's starting to have trouble with remembering their names. There is no colour, no feeling, nothing. She feels like a ghost that's tied to reality, drifting in and out of consciousness. Sometimes she wakes up in places she's never seen before. She's not even sure she can recall her own name. She misses the mask. Misses being Leopard.

Konoha is in ruins, Danzo its once and future king. There are no doubts concerning her loyalty and finally, _finally_ someone hands her a mask. It's not Leopard. She still refuses to answer to anything else.

War comes just like it did last time and she feels like she's home. Battlefields are her plane of existence, a familiar blur of red and black. She can rip, tear and slash, bite, smash, punch-

It's her and only her that reawakens parts that were buried for too long. She wakes from a fever dream, recalls faces and names, whispers her own. She looks at her hands, covered in red, takes a glance at the two boys left and right, remembers who she fights for. But it's too late. Only a handful few are left. It's time to end this, the boys say. Yes, she thinks. An end sounds nice.

She wonders if maybe, maybe Kaguya was right after all. She thinks of the blood and tears, the death and corpses, the pain, anguish, torture. The time comes for her to go for the final punch, to end the goddess here and now. The window of opportunity is narrow. She wonders and wonders and-

Misses.

(The seal was incomplete, the pattern broken, the transfer of memories successful while her personality arrived in countless little shards of glass.)

They sent her to be a hero when they should have made the choice between sending _her_ or a hero. They chose the former.

Sakura chose not to punch.

The world ends quietly and along with it, the endless cycle of violence and death. When it's her turn to go, she accepts it with open arms, finding salvation in long pale fingers that curl around her neck and a single red eye glowing in victory.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even like this one very much but I wrote it for myself and might as well share it just in case someone likes it. I had to get that out of my system before I could concentrate on my main story again.


End file.
